They manage to go the rest of finals without having Steve's promised conversation. Angie probably should have seen it coming—between the papers and exams, packing up for break, and having to endure the same conversation with her mother not once, not twice, but five times about why it made more sense for her not to come home—who had the time for talks about feelings?

Still, though. Walking off campus knowing that she's essentially moving in with Steve for the immediate future puts a pleasant knot in Angie's stomach.

"Jeez," Bucky laughs when she walks into the apartment laden with two duffle bags, her backpack, and a rolling suitcase, "you sure you brought enough stuff?"

Angie ignores his tone, letting her baggage fall to the floor with a relieved groan. "They're locking up the dorms until J-term starts; I didn't want to get two weeks into break and then realize I forgot something."

"Somehow that doesn't seem likely."

"Aw, leave her alone, Buck," Steve says from his spot by the window, where he's sketching.

"Girl's sleeping in my bed for two months, I feel I'm entitled to some ribbing."

"Girl?" Angie repeats in a faux-offended gasp. "Is that all I am to you?"

Steve interrupts before Bucky can respond. "If he were really mad, he'd call you shiksa."

"I still might," Bucky grumbles. Angie moves to stash her stuff in Bucky's room, but their conversation follows her down the hall: "Years of latke training, down the drain. Who's supposed to flip the latkes now, Steve? Becca? Becca is on batter duty, you know that."

"Somehow I think the Barnes family Hanukkah party will survive without its token goy for one year. You only ever put me on flipping duty to get me out of the way."

"No, we put you on flipping duty because if there's one thing an Irishman can do at a Jewish holiday, it's mind the potatoes."

"That's racist."

"No, it's not."

"Fine. It's culturally insensitive."

"Jesus Christ," Angie chuckles as she re-enters the living room. "It's like living with the Gilmore Girls or something."

Steve and Bucky look at her, then at each other.

"IcallLorelai!" they declare in tandem, then, "What?" followed by, "Youcan't!"

Angie goes back into the bedroom.

Peggy is quiet on the drive to the airport the next morning. Granted, they're all quiet—the sun hasn't even come up yet, because Peggy had to get a 7 am flight, and they're exhausted—but when Peggy suggested they didn't all have to miss out on sleep and see her off, they'd given her such offended looks she'd dropped it immediately.

Too cheap to pay for parking, Bucky volunteers to stay with the car and drive in circles while they get Peggy checked in. Steve gives his shoulder a grateful squeeze as Angie and Peggy clamber out and start removing the luggage.

"Spit into the Thames for me, Carter," Bucky says before someone starts honking at him because he's double-parked with his blinkers on. "Yeah? And so's your old man!" he hollers back out the driver's side window. "Sorry, I gotta move. See you next year!"

"Drive safely, James!" Peggy calls after him—apparently thinking he could stand to hear it one more time.

They're only allowed to take her as far as the security line.

"Guess this is it," Steve says gruffly, though it might just be the lack of sleep putting sand in his throat.

Angie elbows him. "Don't be so morbid. She'll be back before we know it, right?"

"Right," Peggy confirms, painting on a smile.

"Okay. Well…" Steve doesn't seem to know what to do with himself. Reaching out to cup Peggy's jaw, he pulls her towards him and kisses her twice—first on the forehead and then on the lips, quickly. "Bye, Pegs."

"Bye," she whispers, but then she's in Angie's arms, Angie tucking her nose right into the cleft where neck meets shoulder and breathing deep while they hug.

As she pulls back, Peggy leans in and presses a kiss right at the corner of her mouth—like she was aiming for Angie's cheek and missed. Or maybe she was aiming somewhere else.

"I'll tell you when I land," she says, and then she's gone.

Angie knows they should walk away, but neither of them make a step towards leaving until Peggy is through the queue and has disappeared past the line of metal detectors, beyond their sight.

Bucky takes them for pancakes, after. He seems to think they need cheering up.

Later that day, once Bucky's gotten the car packed so he can start his own journey home for the holidays, he pulls Angie into his bedroom and closes the door behind them.

"You finally making your move, Barnes?" Angie laughs, and he rolls his eyes at her.

"You wish. No, I just wanted to go over the ground rules with you before I left."

"Ground rules? Come on, Bucky, I think I know how to be a good houseguest. I promise I won't have sex in your bed. I won't even eat in it; hand to God," she vows.

"No, not that. For Steve."

"Fine, I won't have sex in Steve's bed either."

"Angie. This is important," Bucky says, looking her hard in the eyes. Then he starts listing things on his fingers. "The epipen and his emergency inhaler are in the junk drawer in the kitchen. Don't ask him if he needs the inhaler, because he'll always say no—just grab it if you hear him wheezing. Make sure he eats breakfast, or his morning meds won't work right—he's not dumb enough to skip 'em, but he will try to chug them down with orange juice and call it a meal. He has an alarm that goes off at night to remind him about his migraine pills, but if he's involved in a drawing he'll ignore it, so try to make sure. And you've got to clean the apartment every weekend, especially the bathroom; all that stuff's under the sink, except for the vacuum. That's in the hall closet."

Angie's head reels as she tries to keep it all straight. "Are you serious?"

"Dust and mold are his fuckin' kryptonite. That's why I had to get him out of the dorms; you've seen the mildew colonies that grow in the showers on campus."

"I know, but—"

"He gets embarrassed about it, so when I clean I like to put on some cheesy music and dance around a little. Get him laughing. You don't have to, but… sometimes it can be fun. Also—"

"Bucky," Angie interrupts, putting her hands on his shoulders. "Okay. I get it."

She can feel the way his muscles relax, the tiniest bit. "Okay. I'll, uh. I'll text you if I think of anything else."

"He's not a child," Angie says as Bucky turns to go, because part of her wonders when anyone last reminded him of that.

He pauses with his hand on the doorknob. "Just take care of him for me, would ya? I'll see you in a few weeks."

He leaves without giving her a hug goodbye, the drama queen.

"Hey, English!" Angie's voice comes through Peggy's laptop speakers that night, tinny and bright. Peggy watches as Angie settles in next to Steve on the couch, cuddling close to him so they can both stay in frame. "How's home?"

You tell me, Peggy thinks, but she manages to keep it in. "Jet lag-tastic," she says instead.

"Poor baby," Steve laughs. "What time is it over there, anyway?"

Peggy stifles a yawn. "Just past eleven."

"Well what're you still doing up, then? Go to bed!" Angie orders.

"And miss looking at your beautiful faces?"

"You can look at our faces any time, Peg."

Peggy hums. "That is categorically untrue. For the next several weeks my access to your faces will be strictly rationed. I have to store up when I can."

"She's right," Steve agrees, grave. "Lackoffaceemia can be deadly if not treated properly. Stare at us all you want, Peggy."

It's a taller order than he realizes—she could stare for hours and not scratch the itch. "How are you two faring on your own?"

"Bucky's been gone for hours and we haven't burned the place down yet," Angie brags.

"Impressive."

The talk turns to Bucky's family and then digresses into a long, detailed explication on how Steve usually spends his holidays and then back to Bucky's family and the patented Barnes latke production line, which is where Peggy loses the thread a tiny bit, because unlike Angie she's already heard most of this before, so she's content to just let the conversation wash over her with a couple of "mhms" thrown in.

And maybe to sink a little further into her pillows, because well, she's missed her pillows. And they've probably missed her.

"…and then we all take up floristry and hitch a ride with Buzz Lightyear to the moon. Right Peggy?"

"Yeah," Peggy mumbles. At some point her eyes had drifted shut, and opening them again seems the height of inconvenience.

Distantly, she hears Angie laugh. "Think it's time to let her call it a night, Steve."

"It isn't, I'm not tired. I still want to see your—your—" Peggy yawns. "Your faces."

She's going to open her eyes any moment now.

"You'll see them tomorrow, I promise," Steve says, "We'll call."

Peggy makes a noise from the back of her throat—trying to insist that they stay on for a few more minutes, or maybe to make absolutely certain that they will call tomorrow, but her mouth doesn't want to cooperate, she can't quite get the words out, she's…

She's asleep.

Steve is quietly working on his Hanukkah present for Bucky later that night when he hears it:

"Steven Rogers!"

He winces. He's only ever heard Angie take that tone with bratty freshmen at the L&L, people who came late to rehearsal, and Howard. He can't say he's a fan of being on the receiving end.

"Yes?" He calls.

"You get out here right this instant!"

He sighs and puts away his oil pastels before joining her in the kitchenette. Angie's got their cupboard door pulled wide open, revealing its contents—a good three quarters of which is just ramen packets, in every flavor imaginable.

"Well?" Angie demands. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

Steve tries to square his shoulders; she's making him feel like he should be standing at attention. "Um. That ramen is cheap, and also delicious?"

"Jesus Christ! No wonder you're so sickly all the time; I'm amazed you haven't gotten scurvy!"

"Angie—"

"Don't you Angie me. Go get your scarf; we're walking to Hannaford."

"I'm kind of in the middle of something."

"Too bad. Amount of groceries we're buyin', I'm gonna need your arms to help carry. Then I'm making you a real Italian dinner and getting some meat on those bones."

Steve pouts. "I see how it is. You only want me for my body."

"Just the arms and bones," she corrects, before shooing him back towards his room. "Scarf!"

And, okay, yes. The vegetable ziti thing she makes is amazing, and Steve may or may not have an extra helping or five. But still. He is not quitting ramen cold turkey, no matter how many dirty looks Angie gives the cupboard.

("It's Grant, by the way," he says later, as they do the dishes.

"What?"

"My middle name. For next time you want to Steven Rogers get out here this instant me."

She pinches him in the side. "There won't be a next time, mister.")

It doesn't take long for them to fall into a routine. Angie, wiped out after a semester's worth of late shifts at the L&L, sleeps like the dead—sometimes late into the afternoon—while Steve draws or sends notes to Sousa on his latest cut of Bloody Margaret. Then they Skype with Peggy, Angie cooks, they spend the evenings on their computers and the cycle repeats.

Which is why Steve is surprised to wake on Saturday morning to the sound of golden oldies on the iPod dock, occasionally interrupted by the whirr of the vacuum cleaner. Groaning, he buries his head under his pillow and pretends to fall back asleep for the duration of "Can't Hurry Love," "Big Girls Don't Cry" and "Do You Love Me," but eventually his full bladder and morning breath demand that he make an appearance to the outside world.

He finds Angie in the bathroom, scrubbing the shower in yoga pants and a sports bra while singing along to "The Boy From New York City." If she's going to insist on going full Bucky, at least he can't complain about her choice of attire.

"I can't believe he got to you," Steve sighs in order to make his presence known.

Angie turns and smiles, pulling off her rubber gloves and stepping out of the tub. "And he's neat," she sings, carding a hand through his messy bedhead, "and oh so sweet—and just the way he looked at me, he swept me of my feet!"

"Yeah, yeah," he grumbles, in time to the music in order to make her laugh. "Can I have the bathroom, now?"

"Sure. Don't close the door all the way; I just bleached and I don't want you to die of fumes."

"It'd teach you'n Bucky a lesson, wouldn't it?" he hollers after her as she walks away.

Peggy's going a bit mad at home.

She falls back into her normal routines easily: sharing a newspaper with Dad over breakfast before he leaves for work every morning; going on shopping trips looking for endearingly specific things with her Mum ("I'm not going to pickle daikon myself when someone in London is already selling pickled daikon, Margaret, that's ridiculous"); teasing Harry while he's home from Oxford, getting teased in return. That's not the problem, really.

It's just that her family is awfully family-like all the time. Which of course is nothing to complain about—she feels a bit guilty even thinking it at all, knowing that Angie would probably trade places with her in a heartbeat, and Steve would probably just like to see his mother for the holidays, so.

But then, maybe that's the problem: Steve and Angie are creating a makeshift home for themselves, and Peggy had been a part of it until the end of term, whereupon she'd been cruelly whisked away (of her own volition, but really, not the point). And now she's stuck here on the other side of the Atlantic with a family that is very loving and kind except they're loving and kind everywhere and every day, and forced to restrict her interactions with… certain other parties to Skype calls and Twitter updates.

They're probably doing something outrageously attractive right now, Peggy thinks glumly. Like adopting a shelter's worth of small kittens, or making stuffed animal versions of all their friends, not giving a care to the fact that she is slowly wasting away in her home in London, one peeled potato at a time—"Harrison, if you throw another chip at me I'm going to bury this knife in some place sensitive."

Her brother throws another chip.

He then—quite wisely—runs.

Living with Steve is amazing.

Like, painfully so.

Angie had known—vaguely, in the back of her head—that living in a single isn't great for her. She's always been happier with people around, and while she values her privacy as much as the next girl, more often than not she finds herself leaving her dorm at all hours to study in the library (and if Steve happens to be shelving, well), or at one of the student centers. She just… needs the contact. Getting it from Steve feels like an embarrassment of riches. Honestly—aside from their ongoing debate about what the resting state for the toilet seat should be, Steve's been the dream roommate. And she's stupid for thinking about it, it's not even the new year yet, but the idea of going back to living alone after this is just…

He comes home on Christmas Eve lugging a tree so pathetic not even Charlie Brown would choose it, grinning like a maniac and swearing her to secrecy, because apparently if Bucky ever finds out Steve brought a Christmas tree past the mezzuzah on the door there will be hell to pay.

"Wanna help me decorate it?" he asks, cheeks still pink from the cold.

She thinks her heart might burst.

She whips up some cocoa—the good kind, made with real milk on the stove and everything—while he gathers supplies and sets them out on the coffee table. Steve, not for nothing, is a hell of a lot artsier than she is, so while his hand-made decorations look like something out Martha Stewart Living, hers look like something a motor skills-challenged toddler brought home from preschool. Eventually she gives up and prints off a bunch of pictures of Judy Garland's face, cuts them out and strings them together with dental floss that… may or may not be Bucky's.

"It's a Garland garland," she says proudly when she finishes, draping it over the fragile tree with care.

Steve laughs so hard he gets a coughing fit, which is alarming but also kind of makes her gloat. Not everyone can get him to do that.

"We need a topper," she says, when they've been at it for about an hour or so, and the tree is more decorations than pine needles.

He grins at her, disappearing into his bedroom and returning moments later with a small photo of Peggy, which he affixes to the apex of the tree with a paper clip. "Stars go up top, right?" he jokes when Angie raises an eyebrow at him.

"You little sneak." She raises her mug of hot chocolate in a toast. "To Bloody Margaret—probably."

"Probably," he agrees, clinking with her.

They post a picture of the tree to Instagram.

Bucky blocks them both.

On Christmas morning Angie wakes up bright and early (nine o'clock) to the smell of only-slightly-burnt toast and Steve's hesitant smile. "Morning! I made you breakfast."

She smiles back at him before casting a dubious look at the messy tray he puts on her lap. "So I see."

"Hey, I ate it. Promise it's edible."

"I'm not sure if you can count something as edible just because Steve Rogers can eat it," Angie says, but she carefully puts a piece of egg into her mouth anyway.

Steve watches anxiously as she chews. "Well?"

She lets the suspense hang for a second longer before giving him a thumbs up. "Tastes pretty good. You being so nice to me just because it's Christmas?"

"Oh. Um." She narrows her eyes as Steve starts fiddling with a small hole in the front of his shirt. "I mean, yeah! But I maybe also had an ulterior motive."

"Which is?"

"I was wondering if you'd like to come to Mass with me," he says, all in a rush. "I—I know that your family's kind of strict about this stuff so you don't really—and that's totally fine, I'm not really a practicing Catholic either, but y'know. It's Christmas, and obviously we don't have to go to all three, we've missed the midnight one already anyway, so… thing is, Father Lantom is pretty great, so even though the ceremony's kind of boring and the congregation isn't as—"

"Steve," Angie says. "Steve, okay."

"—open-minded as I'd like," he says. "What?"

She giggles a little at his expression. "True, I'm not really into this stuff, and it's a hell of a first date. But you're also right, it's Christmas, and… if you want to go, why not?"

Steve's still staring at her. "I. Really?"

"My mother will be thrilled. But first: presents!" she declares. After a moment she adds, "… and I should probably get dressed."

He nods and leaves, still looking like he can't believe his luck. Thirty seconds later, she hears through her door: "First date?"

Angie laughs.

The tree was too small to put their presents under, so Angie lets out a little huff of surprise when Steve emerges from his bedroom holding a Disney Princess-themed gift bag.

"Don't tell me you're one of those hopeless cases who still needs a parent to wrap their presents," she teases, enjoying the way Steve glares at the accusation.

"I can wrap things just fine," he grumps. "It's just that your present was too floppy to wrap."

"Floppy, huh?" she laughs, taking it from him, but the mirth dies down when she reaches into the bag and pulls out—

"It's a comic book," Steve explains, unnecessarily. She flips through it eagerly, a dozen pages in all of a tiny cartoon version of herself, waiting tables and generally being, well—"Super Angie. Waitress by day, waitress by night. Shutting down assholes with a single super glare."

"Peggy has one of these," Angie mumbles. "I've seen it. Colleen, too. In their living room."

Steve rubs a hand on his neck, looking sheepish. "Yeah. It was kind of my thing, freshman year. And then it occurred to me that you didn't have one, so… I dunno, I'm sorry. I guess it's not very creative, re-gifting after—oh," he laughs when she launches herself into his arms, squeezing tightly. "Okay, hi. Guess you like it."

"I love it," she tells his shoulder, before pulling away and offering him a neatly-wrapped box. "Now you."

Angie watches with twitching lips as he painstakingly removes the paper, trying not to rip it. Her (im)patience pays off, however, when she sees the look on his face as he pulls out the full rainbow set of nail polishes from their box.

"Now I don't have to keep stealing it," he says happily, before looking at her with raised brows, mischief in his eyes. "Dare me to put it on for church?"

She throws a couch cushion at him.

The outside of the church looks absolutely flawless, and so do the people filing in for Day Mass; Angie takes a deep breath, willing away the creeping sensation that she's back home and time is standing still.

Steve squeezes her hand gently, and then nods to a middle-aged couple nearby. "Didn't think crowns were appropriate accessories for Christmas service. She knows it's not Good Friday, right?"

Angie stifles a laugh—the crown that the lady's wearing does look ridiculous—before her brain catches up to the second part of what Steve said. Then she slaps him on the arm. "Don't be blasphemous on Christmas, Steven Grant Rogers."

"I'm just saying, if she wanted to pick a holiday to channel a crowned Christ, then—"

"You are horrible," Angie says, snorting so loudly said middle-aged couple throws them a dirty look.

He just grins at her. "Sure am. You ready?"

Another deep breath can't hurt, she thinks. "Yeah."

They make it as far as the top step before she wrenches him back. "Wait, wait, can we—"

Steve immediately looks concerned. "Are you okay? I didn't mean to make you—"

"It's not you," she reassures him. "I'm not… it's just. Can we sit?"

"'Course."

Of course the fancy-schmancy church doesn't have any benches, so they just kind of drop down on the step and get dirt all over their Sunday best. For a while Angie's content to just stay quiet and watch Steve bristle at everyone walking by who looks at them funny, but well, she's the one who decided they should hang out here looking like idiots, so. "The church I went to, in Ohio…" she shrugs miserably. "S'not like anything really bad happened to me there. I mean, every coupla months you'd get the odd sermon that got the wrong kind of political, but still. Wasn't a bad place, everyone mostly thought they were pretty open-minded."

Steve just gives her hand another squeeze, inviting her to continue.

"I think it's just… the air in there, y'know? Everyone giving themselves pats on the back for dressing up, deacons running around frowning at kids, all those mass prayers and 'the Lord be with yous,' constantly hearing that 'love the sinner hate the sin' stuff, and I…"

She frowns distantly at the last group of stragglers hurrying toward the door. One of them—a little girl about nine—trips over her dress and nearly goes sprawling. "I—I want to believe in a something, or maybe I just want to want to believe, but for some reason… whenever I go to Mass all of that just goes somewhere else. And I thought it was just because I was going with my family, but standing here, now—I don't feel it. It doesn't feel right."

When she finally meets Steve's eyes again, he throws an arm over her shoulders. "Okay."

"Okay?"

He nods. "Me too, sometimes. 'Specially when I was small—" Angie makes a face, so he jokingly amends, "smaller. It always seemed like I was either too distracted or too focused on something that the adults didn't want to talk about. My mom—she's more observant than me, but once she saw how going every week was kind of driving me up the wall we mostly stopped going and she just taught me how to… I don't know, figure faith out by myself. Guess I was pretty lucky, huh?"

Angie chuckles, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes. "Or maybe I was just pretty unlucky. But yeah, I guess I just wish… it's all the structure. I can read catechisms till I go blue in the face and they'll still never feel like mine, you know? And I want—I want… to do things that make me feel like I deserve to believe in it."

Steve makes a soft humming noise before turning to look at the building that looms behind them. "You know, I think you're right," he says, "It doesn't feel right to me today either."

Right now, Angie thinks, the people inside are probably rising for the procession. If she closes her eyes she can hear everyone sound off for the entrance hymn—for Christmas, a carol. She sighs, pulling her knees to her chest. "Sorry I agreed to come and then had a religious crisis."

He laughs. "What, this? You should see the way Bucky's family goes at it during Seder."

She leans into him a little more, and after a moment of silence feels his fingers running gently through her hair. It's… annoyingly relaxing, actually. "So. What's there to do on Christmas for a couple of heathens like us?" she asks, trying to pull herself back to reality.

"Well, hold that thought," Steve says, "You know what you said, about the structure not feeling like yours?"

"Yeah?"

He flashes her a mischievous smile. "I have an idea."

Boxing Day begins early for Peggy by no fault of hers. At four o'clock in the morning she's startled awake by the incessant chiming that indicates she has a Skype call from one Steve Rogers, so she hauls herself out of bed and answers. "Hello?"

She's treated to the sight of a blank wall and poorly muffled giggling; a second later, Steve and Angie burst into frame, Steve piggybacking on Angie. "Merry Christmas!" he yells, and then, to Angie: "Okay, now down."

"Not anymore, you ridiculous idiot," Peggy says, but feels herself flush. She has missed them.

Angie giggles more as she sets Steve back onto the floor. "I told you. Time difference, 'member?"

He scrunches his face into a passable scowl. "Whatever." Then, to Peggy: "We got you Bushmills, but then we drank it. Will you forgive us?"

Peggy blinks, taking in for the first time that they both seem to be wearing makeshift robes. "That explains...quite a lot. Are you wearing drapes?"

Angie nods earnestly. "We tried to go to Mass but on the church steps I said 'It doesn't feel right to me' and then Steve said 'Me neither' and so. We had our own Mass and I read the dirty parts of Song of Solomon instead of the old boring stuff but we needed robes, because we had to be priests."

"I… see."

Steve, meanwhile, is peering intently at a near-empty whiskey bottle. "There's maybe three shots left," he announces. "We'll save that for you."

She snorts. "Don't bother. So—the two of you had fun, then?"

The strange tone to her voice isn't loneliness, she tells herself. That'd be ridiculous; she had a perfectly happy Christmas with her family. More that she feels suddenly a bit left out, like an outsider to their blonde-haired, blue-eyed tribe.

The thought is patently unfair, so she pushes it aside and tunes in again to Angie's enthusiastic description of their day. "—Steve burned the chicken because apparently the only thing he knows how to make is latkes and chickens aren't potatoes, so we had to improvise—"

"Angie ate ramen!" Steve pipes up.

"It was like eating worms," Angie says, shuddering. "But the soup was okay after I threw some vegetables in it so we had that, and then we painted our nails, and I made hot chocolate with whiskey and peppermint schnapps—not both in the same mug, that would be gross—and we watched Rent, and then—"

She stops abruptly and blushes.

"And then we missed you," Steve fills in. "And now we're here. What were you doing?"

"Sleeping," Peggy says, her chest tightening with something that doesn't feel like being left out at all.

Steve scoffs. "That's boring. We should do something together, like… like…"

"Scrabble!" Angie decides, and Steve nods in enthusiastic agreement. "Let me just grab my laptop and we can hook up an online game…"

"You do realize that I have to be up in three hours to help my family with breakfast," Peggy calls after her, to no avail. "Oh, bugger."

"Better Scrabble than Monopoly," Steve says, beaming at her. "'Sides, we're your family too."

"That's hardly the point," she grumbles.

"Come on, Peggy, you're taking forever."

"I'm sorry, it's not my fault. This blasted website must be glitching; it's telling me that 'color' isn't a word."

"What? That's weird. Do you want to refresh?" Angie suggests, but then Steve bursts into giggles. "What's so funny?"

"Peggy, you should—" He stops, trying to catch his breath. "You should try taking the 'u' out."

Peggy blinks at her monitor, where she's gotten the error message 'COLOUR is not a valid word entry, please submit a new word' for the fifth time. "Oh, that's just—it was our word first!"

"Sorry, English."

"This is rubbish. If I take out the u I don't even get the double word score."

"Life's hard."

The game ends up taking a good two hours because Angie and Steve are both apparently inordinately cheerful drunks who can't stay focused, and only ends by consensus after Angie spends ten minutes trying to convince the two of them that "dogg" ought to be an acceptable word because "that's how Snoop Dogg spells it," regardless of what the website says.

Still, Peggy can't resist gloating a bit. "Two hundred and forty points. So much for the primacy of the American dialect, hm?"

"We had you on the ropes," Steve mumbles, yawning. "G'night, Peg."

"Not anymore," Peggy says, again, but he's already hung up. She smiles. "Good night, you two."

Steve wakes up on the couch, back a twisted nightmare and limbs tangled with Angie's. He groans, not so much feeling hungover as feeling like he might still be a little bit buzzed, and tries to get some of the pressure off his spine. Moving, however, only makes Angie cuddle into him more—mumbling in her sleep as she nuzzles his chest. He doesn't remember when they fell asleep.

Angie's hair is a rat's nest of undone curls, she's still wearing her ridiculous fake priest's robe from last night, and in this moment she's so beautiful she takes his breath away. It would be so, so easy to lean in, to gently kiss her awake…

"See something you like?" she asks, eyes still closed.

Steve feels his face heat up, so the natural recourse seems to shift even closer to Angie and downplay. "Eh, you'll do."

"Smooth talker."

"Hrm," he mumbles, eyes drifting shut again. Twisted back or not, Angie is radiating warmth, and he's not really inclined to move any time soon.

He's approaching sleep again when Angie speaks again. "Had a weird dream last night."

"Oh?"

"Yep."

Something in her tone—he's too bleary to figure out what—makes him open his eyes again. "What about?"

She shifts so her face rests against the crook of his neck. He shivers, feeling the thrum of her voice in his skin. "It was… weird. Peggy was a spy and she made you wear this ridiculous costume—the American flag, or something. And together you fought crime."

Steve frowns. "Really? That's… pretty specific."

"I wasn't thinking so much specific as crazy." She pokes absently at his side. "Imagine you hurling this pasty stick body at hardened criminals."

"Hey!" He aims a slap at her hand. "I'll have you know that this pasty stick body has been hurled at plenty of bigger guys."

"Bucky throwing you like a football doesn't count, hon."

Really, the only dignified response to that is another slap, which escalates into a big slap-poke battle until he remembers: "What about you?"

Angie just pokes him again. "What about me?"

"In your dream. You never said—what were you doing?"

"Oh, you know," she says, with a self-deprecating smile, "Waitress by day, waitress by night."

He considers this for a minute. "Huh. Guess you don't need any upgrades to be super."

"Steve," Angie says, laughing incredulously.

"No, I mean it. The way that you're just so—selfless, about everything, and how you get people to be braver and make stuff just… kinder, somehow—that'd stick no matter what job you're working."

"You're still drunk."

"You're still drunk."

"Steve—"

"Nuh-uh," he says, trying to forestall any more incoming skepticism. "I just wrote a whole comic about this, remember? Qualified professional opinion, not up for debate."

Except, he realizes suddenly, Angie doesn't look like she's about to argue. Instead, she's looking at Steve with such a degree of wonder that it makes his whole body go haywire. He's not imagining it, right? The way she's staring at his mouth, the way her own mouth is parted slightly, and her eyes—he feels nine parts like an idiot and one part like a jerk, because Angie's right here in front of him and he wants to kiss her, but Peggy's not here and they still haven't really decided anything, the three of them, and. It would be unfair, he thinks, feeling profoundly miserable. There's really no getting around that.

Still: "You're the best Angie I know," he finishes, and then because if Angie keeps looking at him like that no amount of rationality is going to stop him from kissing her, he thwacks her with a couch cushion.

By the time the ensuing pillow fight draws to a close he's mostly squirreled away the desire to kiss Angie senseless.

Mostly.